Site Loader

July R Lab – Social Network Analysis with a Phone Log Dataset

For the July R lab, we’ll be working with a slightly modified version of the strath/nodobo dataset, a dataset gathered by researchers at the university of Strathclyde who used Nodobo (a suite of social sensor software for Android phones) to study mobile phone usage, . Download the modified dataset here. For those interested, there are also a wide variety of other wireless data related datasets available through CRAWDAD (A Community Resource for Archiving Wireless Data At Dartmouth).

The strath/nodobo dataset is a good dataset for trying out social network analysis (SNA), which uses graph theory to analyze the structure of social connections. There are many SNA libraries available in R or Python. For this lab we’ll be focusing on iGraph, which is available in both R and Python.

To get started with R and igraph, you can try out this very simple, but typical, R script.

 

 

Post Author: Jen Schellinck

Jen Schellinck is the principal of Sysabee and an adjunct professor at Carleton's Institute of Cognitive Science. She founded Sysabee in 2012 with the goal of taking analysis techniques from machine learning and systems modeling and making these available to organizations who are seeking to gain the benefits of technology supported analysis and decision making. For each project, she draws from a pool of expert consultants to create a team customized to the specific needs of the project. She is also the founding member of the Data Science Experts Group, an association of data professionals that build flexible, customized solutions for data-driven companies and organizations. She remains an active participant in academic research via Carleton’s Cognitive Modeling Lab.